Interview with Pär Melin from Pichano, Partner to the Bünsow Business Growth Forum.
Why is the Bünsow Business Growth Forum an important event for you to get involved in?
– That question is a bit double for me. One of the founders of Bünsow, Bengt-Göran Persson, is a bit of a mentor for me as he has lots of experience from the engineering industry that I bring with me. The second is that we need to network outside each guild to understand each other’s challenges and opportunities. Bünsow brings together politicians, civil servants, students and entrepreneurs, to name a few categories. We see ourselves as an important “facilitator” of this forum.
What do you think about this year’s theme for Bünsow “Green opportunities in Northern Sweden”?
– We are really focused towards green and therefore we like the theme. We are partners with S&L Access (Stena AB & Vestas) who have developed the crane of the future for building and maintaining wind turbines. The need for this product is huge and we are very humbled to be chosen as a partner to contribute to the transition we have ahead of us. Then we have an incredible number of requests for green projects in northern Sweden.
The last few years have been marked by a pandemic and now war in Europe, how has the world situation affected your business?
– At the risk of responding with an essay, I will try to keep it short. In business terms, the pandemic was much more difficult than the war in the spring. Our group consists of engineering 50% and maintenance/service 50%. In spring 2020, almost all maintenance stops were postponed or canceled which led to short-term layoffs, it took 5-6 months before demand started to come back. For the engineering sector, where the order horizon is longer, things came to a screeching halt in August 2020, where the order intake was only 30-40% compared to the previous year. Here it took 2-3 months to recover. So 2020-21 are lost years for us. 2022 started fantastically, best January and February ever. Demand remains strong, but we are affected by price increases on e.g. steel, electricity and fuel from February onwards.
How do you work as an organization to contribute to the green transition?
– We have been working within the Sustainability Circle concept where we focus on sustainability based on maintenance needs, which means that we try to repair or make smaller replacements instead of scrapping a larger unit. We are also looking generally at the heating of our workshops where we will be able to replace fossil fuels with, for example, geothermal or district heating where available.
What is your next step as an organization going forward?
– Together with NP3 Fastigheter, we are looking at an expansion of Fromells in Timrå to get a perfect flow for the production of crane arms. We will recycle the heat from the current building to heat the extension, based on an idea from SAP Energy.